ross-bones. The malady is "most incident"
to youth, but Mr. Stoddart wears his rue with a difference. The mad
monkish lover of the dead nun Agathe has hit on precisely the sort of
fantasy which was about to inspire Theophile Gautier's _Comedie de la
Mort_, or the later author of _Gaspard de la Nuit_, or Edgar Poe.
There is here no "criticism of life;" it is a criticism of strange
death; and, so far, may recall Beddoes's _Death's Jest-Book_,
unpublished, of course, in 1830. Naturally this kind of poetry is
"useless," as Mr. Ruskin says about Coleridge, but, in its _bizarre_
way, it may be beautiful.

The author, by a curious analogy with Theophile Gautier, was, in these
days, a humourist as well as a poet. In the midst of his mad fancies
and rare melodies he is laughing at himself, as Theophile mocked at
_Les Jeunes France_. The psychological position is, therefore, one of
the rarest. Mr. Stoddart was, first of all and before all, a hardy and
enthusiastic angler. Between 1830 and 1840 he wrote a few beautiful
angling songs, and then all the poetry of his character merged itself
in an ardent love of Nature: of hill, loch and stream--above all, of
Tweed, the fairest of waters, which he lived to see a sink of
pollution. After 1831 we have no more romanticism from Mr. Stoddart.
The wind, blowing where it listeth, struck on him as on an AEolian
harp, and "an uncertain warbling made," in the true Romantic manner.
He did write a piece with the alluring name of _Ajalon of the Winds_,
but not one line of it survives. The rest is not silence, indeed, for,
in addition to his lays of trout and salmon, of Tweed and Teviot, Mr.
Stoddart wrote a good deal of prose, and a good deal of perfectly
common and uninspired verse. The Muse, which was undeniably with him
for an hour, abandoned him, or he deserted her, being content to whip
the waters of Tweed, and Meggat, and Yarrow. Perhaps unfavourable and
unappreciative criticism, acting on a healthy and contented nature,
drove him back into the common paths of men. Whatever the cause, the
_Death-Wake_ alone (save for a few angling songs) remains to give
assurance of a poet "who died young." It is needless to rewrite the
biography, excellently done, in _Angling Songs_, by Miss Stoddart, the
poet's daughter (Blackwoods, Edinburgh, 1889). Mr. Stoddart was born
on St. Valentine's Day 1810, in Argyll Square, Edinburgh, nearly on
the site of the Kirk of Field, where Darnley was murdered. He came o